


empty as a promise

by bruised_fruit



Series: headcanon compliant [20]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Communication Issues, F/M, Relic Wars era, discussion of suicidality, emotional hurt/pseudocomfort, referenced sexuality, references to cycle 17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22059508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruised_fruit/pseuds/bruised_fruit
Summary: “This is all because of the Hunger, you know that.”She frowns, and she turns back to Faerun below. “We could say that we were pushed to evil. But evil is still evil.”
Relationships: Davenport/The Director | Lucretia
Series: headcanon compliant [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653871
Kudos: 6





	empty as a promise

**Author's Note:**

> title from, uh... well, my mp3 file says "passenger," but googling the lyrics pulls up "little bird." so... it's from a song by lisa hannigan. one of those two, possibly

Davenport finds Lucretia outside, leaning over the railing of the deck and looking down at Faerun. She doesn’t turn as he walks toward her, but surely she can hear him.

“There you are.” She glances back then, hands gripping the railing. Davenport holds out the crude hat Merle knitted for her six cycles back. “I uh, had a hunch,” he says, and she takes it. He thought she’d at least have her coat, and a part of him wants to go inside and grab it. It’s well below freezing. 

She puts the hat on, a little meekly. It’s their first winter here. The cold bothers her of course, but sometimes she’s a little beyond physicality. She likes spending time outside even in inclement weather, and he wouldn’t mind, but she’s never dressed quite right for it. 

“Wanna talk?” Davenport asks. He’d like her to get inside, off the deck. Into something cozier, a glass of Taako’s hot chocolate in her. But he won’t rush her. 

He joins her at the edge of the ship, looks up at her face while she gazes off into the bleak landscape below. 

“Sometimes it hits especially hard, doesn’t it?” 

“Yes,” Davenport says quietly, a hand going to her lower back. Of course this is hard on her. It’s hard on all of them. “At least we have, you know. Each other.”

She smiles slightly. “So cute when you talk like that.”

He chuckles. “What, from the heart?”

She rests a hand on his shoulder, looking back out over the planet, and he leans closer. “I don’t want you getting sick, Lucretia.”

She hums. 

A few moments pass. She’s in a rough mood, he can tell. Dinner will be ready soon, but she might not be ready to see the rest of the crew, or she’d push through it but spend the rest of the night still in her mood. Sometimes she digs a sort of hole for herself, and she gets stuck in it with the worst kinds of thoughts. He could lead her inside, or he could try to dust away the dirt first. 

“It’s hard to believe that we’ve finally won after so many years,” he offers, and she tenses, pulling her hand away and holding her fist to her sternum. Like she’s trying to keep herself safe, holding it away from him. Talking to her was never like a minefield, but lately there are only missteps. 

“You can’t possibly think this is a victory,” she says, her voice low and restrained. 

He balks. He hadn’t thought she’d be so bitter that she wouldn’t care about the silver lining to the devastation below. The whole point of what they did, of everything they fought for, and for so long.

“Oh come on, you’ve been a good sport through all this.”

She turns to look him in the eye, her face not soft and bare like he’d expected, but cold, carefully hard. She’s not wounded by the deaths alone, clearly. And she’s angry. In his century of knowing her, he’s never seen her like this. 

“A good sport?” she echoes, her voice barely audible. 

He frowns, watching her return her gaze planetside. Is she really still upset about their decision back in cycle 92?

“When we chose this plan, it wasn’t a reflection of how we feel about _ you, _ Lucretia. We love you. You know that, right?” 

She scoffs. “I’m not a child. You must know that’s not the—the issue.” Her hands clutch at her arms, and she bends almost precariously over the railing. “We made a promise, Captain.”

His mouth dries. 

“Or was it an empty one? I thought we came to an agreement, but even Lup—” 

“This is completely different,” he snaps, and he bites his lip, immediately regretting the loss of temper. 

She just snorts, derisive. It’s unsettling. 

Lucretia tends to be a reasonable person, and an agreeable one. Quiet, rare to assert herself. She doesn’t argue much, but when she’s had disagreements with him, it’s never been like this. She shrinks in on herself usually, not even wanting her ideas to take up space. And she’s so brilliant, not to mention gentle and kind. It’s rare that he disagrees with her, especially on so fundamental a level. She’s a good person, and intelligent enough that he had long assumed she knew—and accepted—why they were using Lup and Barry’s plan. 

And he had suspected she was privately angry about it, but not to this degree, and never to the point that she would express it this way. 

“Your words are empty, too.” She shifts, moving to grip the railing for support, and she turns to meet his eyes. “You can’t say that you love me and still force me to kill people. To be complicit in something I never wanted from the start. You didn’t even pretend to consider my plan.” Her expression falters, and she breaks eye contact as if regretting her words. As if regretting thinking them. But her expression hardens again, and he realizes that she's trying to channel her upset into something other than just misery.

“I-I did,” he says, failing to find anything adequate to say. 

She knows why he didn't vote. He doesn’t want to rehash this one. 

They didn't do anything wrong here, broadly speaking... It's not like she could want them to give up on this plan just because it has certain costs. And anything the relics have wrought is nothing compared to the devastation of the Hunger.

“Come inside, Lucretia. It’s cold.” 

He watches her grip tighten on the railing. Her shivering has only gotten worse. 

“A little discomfort for one person is nothing compared to the deaths we’ve caused.” 

“Not us,” he says, maybe too forcefully. “This is all because of the Hunger, you know that.” 

She frowns, and she turns back to Faerun below. “We could say that we were pushed to evil. But evil is still evil.” 

Davenport takes a step back, as if trying to distance himself from the thought. “Is that really how you feel, Lucretia?” 

The thought strikes him too from time to time, but he always pushes it away.

He just has to believe that they're doing the right thing. 

“You don’t like the idea of being a villain,” she says, and it sounds like she’s amused. 

“Of course not…” 

She snorts again, and straightens up slightly, eyes still on the plane below. 

“Good. Now leave me alone, Drew, and don’t you dare talk to me about winning again.” 

He doesn’t leave, and he knows that she knows he’s not going to. He stands behind her for what feels like an hour, just watching the slope of her shoulders, her narrow body curled in on itself. She’s shivering, but she doesn’t cry. 

A part of him wants her to cry. A part of him wants the small victory of comforting her through all this. Anger isn't like her, and it's unnerving him. 

Finally she speaks, her voice a low whisper, “I hope I get sick and die here, Drew. I hope you and everyone else has to make the decision of whether or not to ditch this planet and this stupid plan just so one person can come back. Or fuck, live with all the lives you’ve taken, but at least I won’t have to look at it anymore.”

Davenport moves forward, a hand resting on her lower back. “Come inside,” he says stiffly, and she doesn’t react. Doesn’t move. 

“Or what?” 

He takes what is obviously a steadying breath. “You can’t tell me you’re not a child and say something as stupid as that. Get inside, Lucretia, or I’ll put you on suicide watch.” 

She twists to face him. “I was just being—“

“What? _ Dramatic_?” 

She licks her lips. “Um. Impassioned.” 

“Fuck you,” he growls. 

Her face softens, but her mouth twists into a smirk. 

“You do love me,” she says with the sing-songy cadence the twins might use with each other, and he digs his fingers into the flesh of her back, painfully aware that she has only a thin blouse protecting her from the freezing cold. And with little warning, he lifts her over his shoulder, his other arm steadying her. She’s more than twice his weight, but she’s slight, and this is far from his first time lifting her. 

“You’re making it awfully hard today,” he murmurs. 

Her body is limp, her voice soft. “Come on, Drew. You can put me down.” 

“Can I?” he asks, and one of her hands finds his upper back, gives him two short taps. He drops her, maybe too hard. 

“You know I’m not going to kill myself,” she breathes. 

She takes her time getting off of the deck, and he looks up at her, frowning. She’s still shaking like she’s nearly frozen but doesn’t make any effort to move toward the door. 

“Then don’t say shit like that.”

Then her, too quickly: “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Davenport says. He clenches his jaw, nearly regretting the admission, and he takes Lucretia’s cold hand. “Let’s get you inside.” 

“And everything will go back to normal?” 

They take a tentative step. Her legs shake like she might collapse, and he puts his free hand on her thigh to steady her. “Sure. We’ll go back to pretending nothing is wrong.” 

“And I’ll keep pretending not to notice that you cry every time we have sex now.”

He laughs dryly, and they move forward. “And I’ll pretend I’m not hurt that you hid your plan from me for decades.” 

“I’ll— I’ll pretend I’m not just another crew member to you.” 

They stop. His hand on hers tightens, and the other slides upwards, over her hip and resting firm on her abdomen. “You know that you’re not, Lucy.” 

“Prove it.” He watches her take in air, watches her regret her words immediately. 

He keeps a steady gaze on her. “I already have.”

“Because you let me fuck you?” 

He laughs, guiding her forward a step. 

“And here I was thinking you were among the more mature people on this ship.” 

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” 

“I guess so.” He takes in a lungful of cold winter air. “I wouldn’t let anyone else touch me the way you do, you know that... And I wouldn’t let anyone else talk to me the way you do, either. I want it, but it’s still _ hard, _as good as it feels. You understand that, don’t you?” 

He looks up at her, and they pause before the door. His eyes meet hers, and her gaze is serious, her brow slightly furrowed. Out of everyone, surely she knows best that the vulnerability he offers her is a rare find. Out of character. Difficult. She understands, of course she does. After a hundred years, she's become the only person he can consistently come to and be his unguarded self around, and at his rawest, he would trust his troubled mind to her before even himself.

She nods. 

“I’m happy to be— to be anything for you, as long as I can be yours,” he says quietly. “I love you more than anyone.”

“I know. I know all those elopements weren’t just for fun,” she whispers. 

His hand touches the door, the other still gripping hers. “But you think you’re just another crew member to me? Can’t you see how much I love you, Lucretia?” 

It hurts. Maybe she had just been trying to hurt him. He knows she's wounded by what's happening below, and by the fact that... the plan wasn't what she wanted. But it's not a festering wound, not really. She just let her emotions get the better of her, for a short while. He knows she's not angry at them, she's smart enough not to see the relics as a personal slight. 

She squeezes his hand, and he opens the door. He looks up at her one last time, and she nods, and she opens her mouth as if to apologize, then decides better of it. 

“I love you too,” she says instead, and he guides her through the door. 

“Do you want me tonight?” he asks. He closes the door behind them. 

“Dinner’s ready!” Lup calls from the kitchen. They hear the faint sound of Taako cracking a joke and of Magnus and Merle’s uproarious laughter. 

Lucretia leans by the door, still shivering. “I want you now, Drew.” 

“Well, I want you to eat,” he says, a hand on her stomach again, his body pressed close to hers, his head tilted upwards. “And I’ll meet you in your quarters later.” She bends down to kiss him, and her expression is soft when she pulls back. 

“I know this is hard for you, too.”

“...Yes.”

“And I— I know you love me.”

“Good.” He takes a heavy breath. “Dinner?” She nods, and Davenport pulls her to the kitchen, dropping her hand once he’s sure that she’s following. 

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for always ending things on a low note, ehehe. i wrote this a month or so ago & it was one of a couple things that i was hoping to post before my birthday (along with a candlenights-themed fic and a get together fic i wrote nearly 2 years ago...)
> 
> anyway, i hope everyone has a nice candlenights season and a happy new year, ty for reading <3


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